POLICE PROBE 3 INCIDENTS BEFORE TRAIN ATTACK

As Huntingdon knife suspect Anthony Williams, 32, is remanded in custody

- PAUL JEEVES Crime Editor

THREE opportunities may have been missed to stop an alleged knifeman in the 24 hours before a blood-soaked train rampage.

Police received 999 calls about three separate incidents before a man with a knife attacked passengers on an East Coast mainline train bound for London.

Anthony Williams, 32, appeared in court yesterday charged with 11 counts of attempted murder.

It has emerged that the evening before Saturday's train attack a 14-year-old boy was stabbed in Peterborough, Cambs.

Around 15 minutes later a man believed to be Williams entered a nearby barber's wielding a knife.

The same man returned to the salon the morning after, again brandishing a large knife. Williams was yesterday remanded into custody after being charged in relation to Saturday's attack on passengers and staff on the Doncaster to King's Cross train on Saturday evening, and another attack on a teenage boy earlier in the day on the Docklands Light Railway in east London.

Police were last night working to confirm whether and how the three reported incidents in Peterborough on Friday evening and Saturday morning may be tied into the later attacks.

Over 30 officers, including an armed unit, rushed to Huntingdon station on Saturday evening after the southbound LNER train made an emergency stop.

Police arrived within eight minutes of receiving a flurry of 999 calls.

Hero driver Andrew Johnson, a former Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy, manoeuvred the train on to slower tracks so it could stop at Huntingdon to allow terrified passengers to escape the horror and police to enter the carriages.

The train's unnamed ticket inspector, who bravely intervened to save the lives of passengers as carnage erupted moments after it left Peterborough station, was last night said to be in a "critical but stable" condition. Seven others remain in hospital.